Money

And here you have it, the the primary reason that our presidential elections are so screwed up, from a Reuters news story posted today:

The presidential election is 14 months away and with as many as 17 candidates now running, U.S. television and radio broadcasters are elated at the prospect of billions more in advertising dollars...

Wall Street analysts predict television stations alone could bring in a record $2 billion to $3 billion from the 2008 election cycle, up from $1.6 billion in 2006 and $900 million in 2004. Companies expected to benefit include CBS Corp., Hearst-Argyle Television Inc. and Meredith Corp., with the latter two particularly seen benefiting in the early voting states.

The candidates have to start campaigning earlier to raise enough money to compete. The earlier campaigning means they spend more money. It's a vicious circle.

Raising all that money makes the candidates beholden to their contributors, and to the ever-increasing number of lobbyists and special interests. This, in turn, taints those who win, with the lobbyists and special interests making sure to call in their favors when it's time to govern.

It's all about the money. Cut the money out of the process, and you get cleaner government, less campaigning, and shorter election cycles.

The problem is, who makes all that money? Big media companies do. And if we cut the money out of the process, they stand to lose enormous amounts of revenues and profits. So you don't see big media companies pushing for election reform. No sir, you don't. It's not in their best interests.

It is in the interests of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and CNN to prolong the election cycle. The longer the election cycle, the more money they make. So why not drum up false stories and suspense as early as possible? There's big money in it.

A shorter election cycle would be a good thing. Elections without billions spent on television, radio, and newspaper advertising would be a good thing. Politicians who didn't have to spend all their time raising money -- and then taking orders from donors and lobbyists -- would be a good thing. But the media isn't interested in a good thing, they're interested in their own profits.

And that's why we'll never have significant election reform. Hell, you'll never even hear about any such efforts; the media simply won't report them.

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.

Bridges

The I-35 bridge collapse in Minnesota is disturbing on many levels. The personal, of course; I've driven across that bridge several times, a friend of mine drove it every day, and one of my girlfriend's church friends was best friends with someone killed in the tragedy. But more than that, there is the sense that this particular incident is indicative of a larger decay in American society. If one bridge can collapse, why not more?

It's interesting that the I-35 bridge was located in Minnesota, a state with a very good record of infrastructure maintenance; the Minnesotans are a very civic-minded people. I would have thought a collapse like this more likely in a place like Illinois, where the state of the state's infrastructure defines the word decrepitude. I hate driving through Illinois; the roads are in horrible shape, and the bridges worse. It wouldn't surprise me to wake up some morning and find that the entire El system had turned to dust overnight, the crumbling streets having swallowed tracks and trains whole. But we can only dream.

The fact that something like this happened in a state like Minnesota makes it even more disturbing. But it's far from the first of these infrastructure collapses; in recent years, witness also the levees in New Orleans, the steam pipes in New York City, and other less well-known incidents. Things fall apart; the center will not hold.

The 20th century in America was a century of construction -- massive, impressive projects, from the Hoover Dam to the Empire State Building to the entire interstate highway system. The 21st century, however, will be a century of maintenance; all those massive constructions have to be maintained, or they'll fall apart. And, as the I-35 bridge demonstrates, things can fall apart quite quickly, and with tragic results.

The problem is, maintenance isn't sexy. No congressman wants to sponsor the "White River Parkway Repaving Bill," when they can put their name on the "Ted Stevens Bridge to Nowhere Bill." And it's not just our politicians; the public doesn't like to spend money on boring stuff like this. In fact, the public doesn't want to spend money on much, except perhaps big-screen TVs; they want the services, but without the taxes. It doesn't work that way.

Unless we start spending on maintaining our infrastructure, we'll see more tragedies such as the I-35 bridge collapse. Somehow we have to get our minds (and our wallets) around the benefits of spending to maintain the things we have, rather than buying new and sexier things.

Experts say it will cost $188 billion and take several decades to repair all those bridges similarly deficient to Minnesota's I-35 bridge. That seems like a lot, until you consider the $1 trillion spent on the Iraq war. Which is the better investment -- $188 billion to keep our country intact, or five times that amount to destroy a foreign country? I know which one I'd choose.

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree

Termination

The Chinese know how to deal with corruption. When they found Zheng Xiaoyu, former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, guilty of taking bribes to approve untested medicine, they executed him. Just like that. Bad official terminated -- with prejudice.

I'm not a big fan of capital punishment, so this seems a tad severe. That said, where I don't think the death sentence does much of a job in deterring most murderers, I can see where it might have an immediate and positive effect on governmental corruption. Take a bribe, get a seat in the electric chair. Say goodbye to undue lobbyist influence!

If this sort of thing were instituted in the United States, there'd be a long line for the firing squad. Messrs. Bush and Cheney would be at the front of the line, of course, followed closely by Brownie and Gonzales and all their minions, down to the hapless assistants who can't bring themselves to say much of anything in front of Congressional committees. There's so much corruption and cronyism in the Bush/Cheney administration, it would probably be easier to single out the innocent bureaucrats than to name all the guilty ones.

Unfortunately, in the U.S. our corrupt politicians don't get punished for their crimes; instead, they benefit from them. There's no deterrent when offenders get a medal from the president and a fat book contract, instead of being taken to task for what they've done. In China, they execute corrupt officials; in the U.S., we reward them. How's that for an enlightened Western civilization?

I'm not proposing instituting the death penalty for governmental corruption. (In fact, I'm an opponent of the death penalty in general.) But I do think we need to get our moral and ethical act together and root out corruption and cronyism at all levels of government. Even if we don't line the crooks up against a wall and give them a blindfold and a cigarette, we can still throw the bums out on their bums. The bad apples have to go -- it's time to clean up our governmental orchard.

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.

Propaganda

Notice anything different about Iraq war coverage lately? It seems that we're fighting and killing a lot of "al Qaeda" troops. Prior to a week or so ago, we were fighting Sunnis or Shias or just "insurgents." But all of a sudden all those factions have become "al Qaeda."

Except they haven't.

Al Qaeda represents a small fraction of the people fighting in Iraq. Very small. Most of the combatants are, as they have been, Shia and Sunni insurgent factions. That hasn't changed. What has changed is that the Bush administration is now referring to all enemy combatants as al Qaeda fighters, even when they're not.

This should not, I suppose, be surprising. The Bush administration has been lying to us for so long it would be difficult to take them seriously if they ever started to speak the truth. What is disturbing is how easily the lackeys in the press have accepted this new propanda, as witnessed by this headline from Reuters: "U.S. and Iraq Forces Kill 90 al Qaeda in Offensive." And this one from the New York Times: "G.I.’s in Iraq Open Big Offensive Against Al Qaeda." And this one from the Associated Press: "U.S. Targets Entrenched al-Qaeda Fighters."

None of this is true; the people we're fighting are not "al Queda fighters," they're the same Sunnis and Shias we've been fighting all along, as pointed out in exquisite detail by Salon's Glen Greenwald in this blog post. It's just that our government and military leaders are now calling them al Qaeda. But calling them al Qaeda doesn't make them al Qaeda; they're still Iraqi insurgents.

Why this particular lie? By defining our opposition as al Qaeda, the government links our fight in Iraq to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, thus justifying the war as "fighting the terrorists there so we don't have to fight them here." It's all bullshit, and transparent bullshit at that, but it takes on a certain weight when the mainstream media repeats the bullshit without question.

The press has an obligation to report the truth, not to repeat government propaganda. If there is a single reason why our country is in the situation it's currently in, it's not Bush and Cheney and their quest for ultimate power, it's the failure of the press to do its duty. While there are exceptions (thank you, Seymour Hersh), the media today has abandoned the truth and thus forfeited its responsibility to help maintain an open, informed, and free republic. When the press fails us, our democracy fails.

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.

Acting

Fred Thompson is running for president. If you listen to the supposedly left-leaning mainstream media, you hear that Thompson is a good ol' boy, a down-home conservative from Tennessee who drives a pickup truck and embodies traditional (southern) American values.

What the press doesn't tell you is that this image is totally manufactured. Thompson is a high-priced attorney who's made millions as a Washington lobbyist. And when he's not busy buying off our legislators, he's out in Hollywood working as a high-paid actor.

All that down-home, pickup-driving, traditional conservative nonsense? It's just acting. The good ol' boy from Tennessee is just another role Thompson is playing; the Thompson we see (or want to see) is an amalgamation of his various movie and television roles. The reality is much different from the image.

That's fine; politicians have always tried to create optimal images for themselves. What's disconcerting is how the media buys into the image. Listen to any of the cable TV pundits, and they spout the pre-manufactured line: Thompson is a strong authority figure, he's a Washington outsider, he's a down-home good ol' boy. In reality, Thompson is the consummate Washington insider, but that's not what the media reports. They buy into the fabricated image, and perpetuate it.

I supposed it's not surprising; the media has long opted to simplify the complex, and present the story that they think will attract more viewers (or sell more newspapers). Just look at how the media helped to sell George W. Bush during the 2000 election (and beyond), as the good ol' boy from Texas instead of the privileged frat boy from Harvard. I suppose Bush as guy-next-door Texan is a more appealing story than Bush as spoiled rich kid, but it's not the real story.

Same thing with Thompson. It'd be nice to have a real, honest-to-goodness populist from Tennessee running for president. That's not what Thompson is, but it's what he pretends to be, and the press buys into it and perpetuates the myth. They're feeding us what we want to hear, as opposed to what we need to hear.

The press should do more than regurgitate campaign press releases. They should dig beneath the p.r. and unearth the facts, and then tell us what's really going on. That's the disappointing thing about this Orwellian world in which we live; it's not that the politicians are lying to us, it's that the press is falling down on the job. We expect our politicians to lies; we need the media to separate the truth from the fabrications.

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.